US and NATO representatives keep trying to convince the world that Afghanistan is not a corruption-ridden quagmire of violence, and US Defence Secretary, General Mattis, told reporters in Kabul on September 28 that "uncertainty has been replaced by certainty" because of new US policy, and that "the sooner the Taliban recognizes they cannot win with bombs, the sooner the killing will end."

At the same press conference NATO's Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that following a Taliban attack on Kabul airport that day, which he described as "a sign of weakness, not of strength," he "would like commend the Afghan Security Forces which are handling these kind of attacks and it is yet another example of how professional they are, how committed they are and how they are able to handle this kind of security threat." (In September the US Air Force dropped more bombs on Afghanistan "than in any other month for nearly seven years.")

In the following month, from October 17 to 23, there were six major insurgent attacks which demonstrated that the militants are far from weak: